What you see:A Pleasant Trip to Germany, a travel poster created circa 1935 by Jupp Wiertz. Swann estimates its at $4,000 to $6,000.

Who was Jupp Wiertz? He was a German graphic designer, and unfortunately, we don’t know much more about him. He was based in Berlin, and he created several travel and fashion-themed posters. He died in 1939, when he would have been 57 or 58.

So we have three different forms of transportation (a zeppelin, an airplane, and an ocean liner) and three different destinations (Germany, New York City, and Rio) loaded into one poster. Why? “This is propaganda–Germany controlling the skies and the seas, flaunting its technology and bragging about its place in the modern world,” says Nicholas Lowry, director of Swann Galleries. “It’s a very effective ad, in that sense.”

How do we know that the zeppelin pictured on the poster is the Hindenburg? “You can tell by the position of the cockpit,” he says. “On the Graf Zeppelin, it’s all the way forward. On the Hindenburg, its three-quarters of the way down [the body of the airship].”

Do vintage travel posters that feature zeppelins bring a premium? “Zeppelins bring a premium. Swastikas bring whatever is the opposite of a premium,” Lowry says, adding that the most popular zeppelin travel poster was also done by Wiertz. It shows the Hindenburg readying to hitch itself to the docking mast atop the Empire State Building, which is ablaze with golden sunlight. Swann has sold the poster for as much as $15,600.

What else makes this circa 1935 travel poster special? “It’s the peak of Art Deco. Though the ship is unrecognizable, the Art Deco style is very recognizable,” he says. “Plus the ghostly outline of the cityscapes–it’s really a masterful job. It’s fun to have something from the golden age of travel and fun to have something from the very short timespan when zeppelins were operating. They were as captivating to the world’s imagination as the Titanic was in its time.”

Antiques Roadshow returns to PBS with a pair of new episodes on Monday, October 30, at 8 pm (check your tv listings for your local station) in advance of the debut of Season 22 on January 8, 2018. To celebrate, I’m reposting stories from The Hot Bid that feature people who’ve appeared on the show as appraisers. Today I’m featuring Nicholas Lowry of Swann Auction Galleries–a fan favorite and a personal favorite.

Update: The Tadanori Yokoo poster sold for $4,250.

What you see:Word Image, a poster designed by Tadanori Yokoo for a 1968 show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Swann Galleries estimates it at $4,000 to $6,000.

Who is Tadanori Yokoo? He is a Japanese graphic artist and painter who has been compared to Andy Warhol and Peter Max. The 1968 MoMA exhibition poster represents one of his few American commissions. He will turn 81 in June.

What was Word and Image? “This was one of the first really major international poster shows,” says Nicholas Lowry, director of Swann Galleries. “For us, it was a seminal exhibit, and by us, I mean the poster community.”

Why was Yokoo chosen to create the poster for this MoMA show? While stating that he is unaware of the backstory, Lowry points out, “He was an up-and-coming artist. No one was going to say, ‘Oh, you’re going with the easy standard.’ This was something new. And this was the first mainstream poster he did. In three years, he went from an unknown artist to designing the image for the first major poster retrospective in the U.S.”

What makes this poster so strong? “It works in the manner that it’s supposed to do–it catches your attention,” Lowry says. “As you walk down the street, it sinks into your head and embeds in your cortex as you pass by. The poster screams at you till you hear it with your eyes. That’s exactly what it does. It’s a great, great poster.”

What other aspects make Word Image work? “What you can’t tell is those are Day-Glo colors–bright pink, bright red, bright blue,” Lowry says. “And he is visually literalizing the name of the show–‘word’ with mouth, and ‘image’ with eye. The message speaks for itself. The only typography is the title at the top and the details at the bottom.”

How rare is this poster? It’s not rare, but it’s not common, either. Lowry says that Yokoo’s Word Image poster took off at auction only after a 1965 Yokoo poster unexpectedly pulled in $52,800 against an estimate of $6,000 to $9,000 at a Swann sale in 2013, prompting collectors and dealers to comb through their holdings for vintage Yokoos. Since then, a Word Image poster has appeared at auction at least once a year.

What you see: A pair of mammoth tusks from Alaska that date to the Pleistocene era (which spans about 11,700 years ago to 2.6 million years ago). Heritage Auctions estimates the pair at $150,000 to $250,000.

These tusks come from a bull, or male, mammoth. Did only bull mammoths grow tusks? And how do we know these are from a bull? “The females have tusks, and the juveniles have them too,” says Craig Kissick, director of nature and science for Heritage Auctions. “The consensus is based on size. This pair of tusks has a pronounced horn, with a big curve. Female tusks are straighter and thinner.”

Were they attached to a skull when they were discovered? “These were probably not found with the bone. They were found together, and you can tell by looking that they’re a matched pair,” he says. “It’s a really nice matched pair, with good color and a nice curve. That’s rare.”

How often do matched pairs of mammoth tusks come to market? “They’re much less common,” Kissick says. “For every tusk you find, a matched pair would be a very small portion of the total take.”

The measurements given in the lot notes–68 inches by 40 inches by 5 inches–are a little hard to understand. What do they describe? The number 68 describes the width of the tusks as they appear in the black display armature, which is visible in the picture. The 40-inch measurement corresponds to height, starting at the bottom of the armature and ending at the top of the tallest tusk. The 5-inch measurement should probably be five feet, because it describes the depth of the display from the front of the armature to the back.

You said that the tusks have “good color.” What does that mean here? “They have smooth whites, tans, and creams. The colors are sublime, not bright and bold like some of the others,” he says. “It’s a nice color palette that’s the result of how the tusks were actually fossilized.”

The lot notes say the tusks are in excellent condition. What does that mean when we’re talking about fossils? “With fossils, by their very nature, you’re not going to find what you’d call a perfect fossil,” he says, explaining that all fossils need at least some level of “preparation”, a term that covers repairs and restoration. “These tusks appear to have minimal restoration. There’s not a big chunk of the tip that had to be put back on. There are no cracks that had to be filled with putty or paint. These are in really good condition. That’s why they’re important and have a high valuation. They’ve been polished to make them the most presentable [they can be]. No matter how museum-quality it [a great fossil] is, there’s also a decorative quality that makes it amazing to put on display.”

In the foreground of the photo of the mammoth tusks, there’s a fluffy bunny with a carrot in front of it. Why? “It’s for scale,” he says. “Scale doesn’t always translate from your brain to your eyes. We usually put a brass ingot next to minerals, for context. For things that are really big, we’ve used babies, we’ve used kids, we’ve used people, we’ve used dogs.”

But why a fluffy bunny, this time, then? “The tusks are weird with the armature–it’s not easy for an adult or a child [to get in to the space between the tusks in a manner that works for the shot]. It’s easier to plop a bunny down there, and that’s what we did,” he says, explaining that the rabbit is the pet of a junior cataloger at Heritage Auctions. “For further whimsy, we threw the carrot in front of it, because it doesn’t look like a bunny, it looks like a beast. It behaved well enough not to hop off before we took the picture.”

I’d be tempted to tweak the lot notes to add a jokey reference that says the bunny and the carrot don’t come with the tusks. “People can get weird about it [what’s shown in catalog photos versus what’s actually part of the lot]. You’d be surprised,” he says. “We were half thinking of saying, ‘Rabbit not included.'”

How to bid: The matched pair of woolly mammoth tusks is lot #72194 in Heritage Auctions‘s Nature & Science Signature Auction in Dallas on November 4. As noted above, the rabbit and carrot are not included. Also know that if you live in New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, or California, your state’s laws prevent you from bidding on the tusks. See the lot notes for more.

Update: All ten prints from the Campbell’s Soup II set that Warhol gave to Dr. Rossi sold in the Christie’s auction. Lots 1 through 4 (lot 4 is shown above) and lots 6 through 8 each sold for $37,500. Lot 5 sold for $35,000. Lots 9 and 10, which were more faded, sold for $16,250 and $23,750, respectively.

What you see: A screenprint from Campbell’s Soup II, a limited edition series of 250 that Andy Warhol created in 1969. Warhol also made 26 artist’s proofs–sets reserved for his own use–and marked each with a letter. This print is from the ‘B’ set and it is lot 4 in an upcoming Christie’s sale. The auction house estimates it and seven others from the complete ‘B’ set at $18,000 to $25,000; two more from the same group are estimated at $10,000 to $15,000.

Who was Andy Warhol? Born as Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he is one of the most famous and influential artists of the 20th century. Like Picasso, he refused to confine himself to a single medium, taking on painting, printmaking, film, photography, rock band management, and creating books and magazines. The scene that evolved around his Manhattan studio, which he dubbed The Factory, became famous in its own right. A 1968 exhibition program for his work contained the words, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,” a phrase that has become more prophetic over time. On June 3 of that year, Valerie Solanas, an outlier member of The Factory scene, attacked the artist at his studio, shooting him and a visiting art critic. Both survived, but Warhol nearly didn’t, having suffered injuries to several organs. Warhol lived for 19 more years, succumbing in 1987 in Manhattan after gallbladder surgery. He was 58.

Warhol created a lot of iconic images–the Mao portrait, the Brillo box, the Marilyn silkscreen–but his Campbell’s Soup can images might be the best-remembered of his works. Why? “It really gets back to the origin of Pop Art,” says Lindsay Griffith, specialist and head of sale for prints for Christie’s. “He played with the idea of what you already knew. You were so conditioned to see them [the soup cans] in a different context. You did not expect to see them in a gallery. He toggled back and forth between high and low constantly. He changed the nature of image production in the fine-art sense. It’s the purest expression of that.”

I was aware that Warhol had been shot in 1968, and I had seen the photos of him displaying his scar, but I had no idea how badly he was hurt. What happened? “He was actually declared clinically dead. Three bullets entered his chest and stomach. He lost a tremendous amount of blood,” she says. “Dr. Giuseppe Rossi was a chest and thoracic surgeon. He had handled quite a few gunshot victims because of what the neighborhood [of Columbus hospital, whose emergency room received Warhol,] was. He was talented with gunshot surgeries. Every account I have read shows, truly, he saved Warhol’s life. In reading his diaries, that’s how Warhol felt. The damage was incredibly extensive, and he was in pain for the rest of his life.”

It seems that Warhol could have done better with handling the bills that Dr. Rossi sent. The doctor wrote “Pay up you blowhard” on the outside of one of them. And a story that Christie’s wrote on the ten lots includes an image of a check Warhol wrote to the doctor for $1,000, which bounced (scroll down to see it). Did the artist send the Campbell’s Soup II set of prints as payment for his treatment? “Rossi also became Warhol’s doctor for the rest of his life. That bill [the one Dr. Rossi wrote his message on] is potentially related to that,” she says, describing an ongoing relationship between the artist and the family that included Warhol sending Christmas gifts and sitting for an interview with Dr. Rossi’s young son for his middle school newspaper. “A number of people received the prints as gifts. They were really a gift, a gesture of gratitude,” Griffith says, and adds that Warhol asked for Rossi when he entered the hospital in 1987, but the family was vacationing out of the country. Warhol died before they came back. Dr. Rossi died in 2016.

The family consigned the full set of 10 prints to Christie’s, but you are selling them individually. Why? “We felt that was how they would perform best commercially,” she says, explaining that the Rossis stored eight of the prints in a box under a bed and displayed two. If you compare lots 9 and 10 to lots 1 through 8, which stayed in the dark from 1968 to now (scroll down a little to see the 10 lots as a group), you’ll spot the difference that UV light can make. “We wanted to emphasize the condition of those eight. Their colors are in exceptionally wonderful condition.”

Do the estimates for the ten prints reflect the value of the story of Warhol and Dr. Rossi? “We priced them because they are wonderful objects. We did not take the provenance into account at all,” she says. “But provenance is always an interesting X-factor at auction.”

Why will these lots stick in your memory? “This is one of my favorite stories from the last few years of being here at Christie’s,” Griffith says. “Rossi is directly responsible for continuing a tremendous career in 20th century art. It’s a story we’re privileged to be a part of, and we encourage everyone to come and see the prints. They look absolutely amazing in our gallery. They’re meant to be looked at.”

How to bid: The set of Campbell’s Soup II prints given by Warhol to Dr. Rossi are lots 1 through 10 in the Prints and Multiples sale at Christie’s New York on October 24 and 25.

What you see: A Bounty Hunter dune buggy, completed in 1969. It has 45,000 miles on its odometer, and it has a manual transmission. Los Angeles Modern Auctions estimates it at $30,000 to $50,000.

What is a dune buggy? It’s a recreational off-road vehicle designed for use on beaches, deserts, and dunes, hence the name ‘dune buggy.’ It descends from the VW Beetle, a car with a chassis that was light enough to drive on sand. Dune buggies were primarily kit cars, which means that someone would buy the kit and build the car themselves or have other people do it for them. The cars had their heyday from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, when lawmakers realized it probably wasn’t a good idea to let drivers tear across delicate shoreline ecosystems with abandon.

Why is this one called a Bounty Hunter dune buggy? The name is a nod to Steve McQueen’s Western show, Wanted: Dead or Alive, which ran in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He played a bounty hunter. Apparently, one of the dune buggy’s designers met McQueen and helped him when the star ran out of gas.

How do you choose the cars that you auction at LAMA? “We’re looking for something special,” he says. “It’s not necessary to sell it to a car person, but it’s important that a car person looks at it and gets it. It has to do both–it has to excite the design people and a car person can’t look at it and say, ‘Why this one?”

Dune buggies were kit cars, which means the people who bought them built the car or had someone else do it. Why does this example stand out? “The original owner is a figure in the custom car world,” Loughrey says. “When he built it in 1968, he knew what he was doing. This really is the ultimate dune buggy. He custom-built the best example that could be built around this body.”

I also understand that the car is street-legal, while most dune buggies are not? “Because he’s a professional builder and wanted to build the ultimate dune buggy, he wanted to drive it to the dunes and drive it back [instead of towing it],” he says. “He had the headlamps built into the body. The turn signals and rear lamps are from a 1964 Corvette body. He never liked the Jeep-style windshield on other dune buggies, so he took the windshield from a 1964 Renault. He knew every detail was going to make a good, fun vehicle to drive.”

This car is described as being ‘mint.’ What does that mean in this context? “Maybe that’s not the right word. It’s more like a flawless survivor,” he says, explaining that the only parts that aren’t original are the radio and a set of speakers that were installed in the 1980s. “It shows very little wear. The original [fiber] glass body was gel-coated. It has its original gel coat. It has all-original pin-striping that hasn’t been touched since 1968. He [its creator] knew it was a special car, and not a daily driver. It was a work of art, always.”

Is it drivable? Have you driven it? Yes, and no. “These things have to be usable,” he says. “A Picasso vase–you can use it. I won’t, but I can use it. An Eames chair–you can sit on it. If you say oh, it’s not functional anymore, you cut out a large reason for buying it.” But Loughrey had yet to drive the dune buggy during the week that he did this interview–the brakes were being replaced. “If I sell it to a museum, I’ll be the last one to drive it,” he says.

What else stands out about the dune buggy? “Anytime we have a car, it always stands out. The little kid in me loves that we’ve got a dune buggy in our showroom,” he says. “People have asked me for years what our next car will be, and I’d said, ‘maybe a dune buggy.’ I’ve been beating the bushes for several years. When I saw it, it was love at first sight. It was exactly what I wanted–not restored, not repainted. It was 100 percent original.”

Update: The antique French life-size articulated wooden artist’s mannequin sold for $45,000.

What you see: A life-size articulated wooden artist’s mannequin, made in France, dating to around 1860, and measuring about 60 inches tall. Rago Auctions estimates it at $20,000 to $25,000.

If you were an artist in the 19th century and could afford a life-size articulated wooden mannequin, couldn’t you afford to hire a live model instead? “Possibly, but live models were not always available. And a mannequin can hold a pose forever. It’s almost more posable than a real person,” says Marion Harris, a specialist in antique mannequins and curator of the Curiouser and Curiouser sale for Rago. “Life-size artist’s mannequins were expensive, and they were valued in their own right. They became something of worth in an artist’s inventory. Mannequins were often listed in the estates of artists when they died.”

How many life-size artist’s mannequins have you dealt with? How many are known? Harris says she has handled 15 to 20 over the last quarter-century. She suspects that maybe as many as 100 were made between the 16th and 19th centuries, and as many as half might survive. “They’re just about always androgynous,” she says. “I’ve looked at the same one and seen it as male, then seen it as female.”

Would one artisan have carved the face, and other artisans have carved the rest of the body? “I don’t know how they did it, but it’s likely. Four or five ateliers were known for carving them. Even the bad mannequins are very good. It’s so hard to do,” she says. “This mannequin has a particular sensitivity to the carving. It’s so lifelike.”

Ribs were carved into the mannequin’s torso. Why? “That’s another sign of quality, when the ribs are evident,” she says. “You do want to see the ribs, if you can. It lets the piece look more realistic. Without the ribs, it looks more puppet-like. Anything that gives the mannequin a more realistic human quality to its features makes it more efficient and effective for the artist.”

Does the mannequin have a patina? “It has a brilliant patina–not just from being handled, but from age. It glows with pride as well as age, I like to say,” she says.

How much does it weigh? About 100 pounds. “I could almost carry it. But it would have been on a stand. Once it’s on a stand, it’s completely posable,” she says. “It’s almost like a real person.”

People might know the mannequin from the Manhattan shop window of Ann-Morris. How did you convince the shop’s owners to consign it? “Everybody wanted to buy it. They would rent it to films, but they would never sell it. Now that the son has taken over the business, I finally got him to part with it,” she says. “It’s a fitting way to part with it. They wanted to give it a rather grand farewell. They’ve had others, but this one was always the queen.” (Harris later confirmed that though the mannequin had appeared in the window since the 1970s, the family never gave it a name, surprising as that might seem.)

What else makes the mannequin special? “I’ve seen other mannequins. This one almost calls out to you to say, ‘Touch me, love me, hold me, pose me, care for me. I’m here for you and you’re here for me,'” she says. “Even people who’ve never seen it before stop in their tracks. And a number of people would have seen it and looked at it adoringly [when it was in the Ann-Morris window].”

What you see: A Tortues (Turtles) vase by the French glass master and entrepreneur René Lalique, rendered in amber glass with a hand-applied white patina. It was designed in 1926 and produced between 1926 and 1945, when Lalique died. Rago Arts and Auctions estimates it at $10,000 to $15,000.

This vase was made from amber glass. Why does it look ruby red, then? “It does come across that way. Without light penetrating them, the colors on a Lalique vase can look different, definitely the darker colors,” says David Rago of Rago Arts and Auctions. “My understanding is this is the best of them. You don’t see this color in many pieces to begin with. The patina brings out some of the detailing.”

How rare is this Lalique vase? Rago can only recall handling one other example, which was also a dark amber. His auction house sold it for $34,000 in 2006. While it was in production for almost 20 years, not many were made, probably because of the thickness of the glass and the unusual bulging shape.

How does its relatively large size (10 1/2 inches by 9 1/2 inches) enhance its value? “The larger vases were not made in great numbers. It’s not a massive piece, but it’s bigger than a lot of them,” says Rago. “It’s a statement piece of Lalique.”

What else makes this Lalique vase special? “Glass can be feminine by nature. I find this to be a fairly masculine piece in the form, the size, the weight of it, and the design,” says Rago. “It’s not a soft pink. It’s not a particularly pretty color. Instead of being fluid and curvilinear, this is heavy, large, and thick. Most of his vases tend not to have that type of strength. And it’s big, it’s rare, and it’s in perfect condition. If you have a checklist for a major molded piece of Lalique, you have it all.”